2D Artist - Issue 073 - January 2012

Cover Image By Blaz Porenta

Concept Art, Digital & Matte Painting Magazine Issue 073 January 2012

Interview Tuomas Korpi

Articles Sketchbook of Julian Totino

The Gallery Oleg Leshiy Shekhovtsov, Serge Birault, plus more!

In the latest of our Illustrating Fairytales series, Blaz Porenta gives us his monstrous take on this fairytale classic.

Painting Creatures From Mythology

Matt Dixon and Simon Dominic Brewer go head to head in this brand new series, as they both tackle the mythical Charybdis using Photoshop and Painter respectively.

Futuristic Vehicles

Carlos Cabrera shows us how to create a futuristic submarine from scratch in the latest part of this series.

Creating New Worlds

In the penultimate part of their comprehensive guide, David Smit and Nadia Karroue show us how to go from concept to story when designing your own world.

Contents “Little ideas just pop out during the day. If they are any good, I write them down on my notebook or cell phone”

Contents

Editorial

What’s in this month’s issue?

Hello and a very happy

“The truth is that I still struggle when drawing and things rarely come out smoothly”

Tuomas Korpi

008

new year! I hope that

Concept Artist

you all enjoyed a

Sketchbook

024

festive break and had a memorable new year.

The sketchbook of Julian Totino

This month we feature: Serge Birault Markus Lovadina Simon Weaner Ferdinand Ladera Roma Cherepov

The Gallery

032 Andreas Rocha

Alexander Tooth

2DArtist are happy to kick

Alexey Zaryuta

Oleg Leshiy Shekhovtsov Ejiwa Ebenebe

the year off with some

10 of the best 2D artworks

Illustrating Fairy Tales

042

amazing tutorials and a really exciting new tutorial series.

Red Riding Hood by Blaz Porenta 048

Chapter 3 - Red Riding Hood

The ability to tell a story within your image is a real skill. There are so many things that need to be taken into consideration,

Creative concepts the overall composition, what you do and don’t put in using the scene and how togoogle portray the emotion of thosesketchup in the scene.

These are all things you must consider if you plan to lead the viewers gaze through the scene and make them understand the story behind it. In this series of tutorials illustration experts Simon Dominic Brewer and Blaz Porenta will be talking us through how to tell a story, using well known Fairy Tales which they will re-invent as the subject matter. This series could totally change the way you approach a digital painting.

Designing Your Own World From concept to story by David Smit & Nadia Karroue

We will start this month

Futuristic Vehicles

056

by talking about the stunning image on the cover. I am sure you have been enjoying the excellent Illustrating Fairy Tales series. Up till now we have been in

Chapter 1 | September Issue 069 Ideas, Sketching and the Hippies Chapter 2 | October Issue 070 Design and Hippie Anatomy Chapter 3 | November Issue 071 Designing Hippie-Pippie Space-Vans!

Chapter 4 | December Issue 072 Illustrations Chapter 5 | This Issue From Concept to Story Chapter 6 | Next Issue What to Do With These Hippies?

064

Submarine by Carlos Cabrera

Almost every artist gets to a point when they decide that they want to start a new and unique project that they have total creative control of.

When you get to this point it can be hard to decide what exactly it is that you would like to do. How do you come up with ideas? And how do you develop them and make them interesting? In this series David

Creatures from Mythology

Smit, with the help of Nadia Karroue, will be showing us how to create an idea and turn it into a unique and interesting project. This series will

“Music has (at least for me) the ability to intensify emotions.

Sometime I browse through my iTunes library and get drawn to one of them”

be concentrating on David’s visually stunning self-made world called the Hippie-Pippie-Pocalypse and will have something for everyone, from idea generation techniques to design and painting advice.

Too many 2D artists using 3D in your pipeline will seem very alien. However in certain situations it can provide you with the help you need to create quick and accurate concepts. 3D can be used as a base in many forms of 2D art, but it is never more useful than when creating illustrations of non-organic

Download Introduction to Google SketchUp

structures and vehicles. In this series our artists will be showing us how to use Google’s free modeling

the very capable hands of Simon Dominic Brewer, but in this month’s magazine we hand proceedings over to Blaz Porenta. In this issue

software SketchUp to create a base for our Digital Paintings of a Vehicle. If this is something you

November Issue 071 Chapter 01 | All-Terrain Vehicle December Issue 072 Chapter 02 | Drop Ship This Issue Chapter 03 | Submarine

“Keep The Streets Empty”

078

If anything is going to keep you off the streets at night it would be this creepy illustration,

Blaz talks us through how he created his stunning image of Little Red

which is the creative work of Makus Lovadina.

In this Making Of he tells us how he set the

Project overview by Markus Lovadina

With the release of 3DTotal’s new book, Digital Art Masters: Volume 6, we have some exclusive chapters for you...

mood for his stunning illustration and added the to these empty Myths, legends andmonsters fantasy creatures havestreets. always been influential when it comes to digital art. InThis fact,ismany willan never really stray too far moreartists than just artwork book.

084

from these sorts of themes and ideas. In this series a selection of stunning artists will be taking this Not popular and exploring some only subject does it feature full-color, full-of its more images, but they each will artist hasto given a diverse and lesser known characters. Throughout the series each artist will be given a brief for apage character which need interpret and

Riding Hood and describes how important it is to set your mood and

detailed description, their own words, turn into an illustration. To make things a little more interesting this will be done by not one but two artists, one usinginPhotoshop and the other

of the behind each piece using Painter. This will not only show some of the differences between the two pieces of software, butcreation will alsoprocess show how the same brief can be of published artwork. And they’ve done it

interpreted in two different ways. This month Matt Dixon and Simon Dominic Brewer tackle the Charybdis.

especially for this book!

This month we feature:

“Baroko”

composition at the start of the process when trying to portray a story in your image. I can give you some insider knowledge and let you know

Charybdis by Matt Dixon & Simon Dominic

have never tried before it could open your eyes to new and exciting possibilities.

by Blaz Porenta

“Baroko” Digital Art Masters: Volume 6 – Free Chapter

About Us

092

that this series is well worth keeping an eye on.

3DTotal.com Ltd information and contacts © 2011 3DTotal.com. Published by 3DTotal Publishing. All rights reserved.

David Smit and Nadia Karroue continue to tell us about how they have developed and expanded their fantastic Hippie Pippie Pocalypse universe in this month’s issue, and in particular they talk us through how

Editor

Layout

Content

Sub-Editors

Simon Morse

Layla Khani Matt Lewis

Simon Morse Tom Greenway Richard Tilbury Chris Perrins Jo Hargreaves

Simon Morse Jo Hargreaves

Lead Designer Chris Perrins

they develop their characters and how to turn an idea into a story.

Marketing Jo Hargreaves

We wrap up our short series on using Google Sketch Up to create vehicle illustrations this month, and bring things to a close with a real

by different artists. Getting the ball rolling this month are two UK based

bang. One of 2DArtists favorite artists Carlos Cabrera is back in

artists who show us how they thing a Charybdis would look. The two

this issue and shows us how create a cool illustration of a futuristic

artists will use different software, so in this issue Simon Dominic Brewer

submarine. Carlos is a real pro when it comes to painting over a 3D

will be showing us how he created his image in Painter and Matt Dixon in

base, so this tutorial is a must for anyone interested in the technique.

Photoshop.

Now it’s time to tell you about our exciting new series! Mythology

As you can tell this is a great issue and we haven’t even talked about

has inspired all types of art for years, and we are more than familiar

the amazing interview with one of my favorite artists Tuomas Korpi.

with images of Medusa and The Minotaur, so in this series we will be

We also have a great Making of by the very talented Markus Lovadina

exploring the lesser know creatures of mythology in an interesting

and some stunning gallery images by Serge Birault, Simon Weaner,

and unique way. We will be giving a short brief to two (yes two) artists

Andreas Rocha and many more talented artists. I hope you enjoy the

who will be told to interpret and create an illustration from it without

new magazine and that it helps you get the new year off to a creative start.

researching the subject further. At the end of the tutorials we will be able to compare images to see how the same brief can be interpreted

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Issue 073 January 2012

Get the most out of your

Magazine!

If you’re having problems viewing the double-page spreads that we feature in this magazine, follow this handy little guide on how to set up your PDF reader!

Setting up your PDF reader For optimum viewing of the magazine it is recommended that you have the latest Acrobat Reader installed.

You can download it for free here: DOWNLOAD!

To view the many double-page spreads featured in 2DArtist magazine, you can set the reader to display ‘two-up’, which will show doublepage spreads as one large landscape image:

1. Open the magazine in Reader;

View menu, then Page display; 3. Select Two-up Continuous, making sure that Show Cover Page is also selected.

2. Go to the

Contributors Tuomas Korpi

Tuomas Korpi is a concept designer, matte painter and illustrator from Finland who currently working at animation studio PiĂąata. He has been working professionally for about 7 years and is constantly on the lookout

Contributing Artists Every month many artists from around the world contribute to 3DCreative

for new and inspiring projects to get his hands on!

He likes to mix different techniques with interesting themes and styles.

and 2DArtist magazines. Here you can find out a bit more about them!

If you would like to be a part of 3DCreative or 2DArtist magazine, please contact: simon@3dtotal.com

Blaz

http://www.tuomaskorpi.com/ tuomas.korpi@gmail.com

Simon

Porenta

Dominic

As a child Blaz read thousands

Simon is a freelance illustrator

of fairy tales. Today he tells

specializing in fantasy, sci-fi,

them himself but instead of

horror and the generally bizarre.

writing them, he paints them.

He paints digitally, applying

Blaz likes to create a snapshot of his world for

traditional techniques through use of digital tools. He

viewers, and let them create their own story.�

has worked on game art, book covers, editorial and magazine workshops since going pro in 2009.

http://www.blazporenta.com/

http://www.painterly.co.uk/

blaz.porenta@gmail.com

si@painterly.co.uk

Image by Tuomas Korpi

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Issue 073 January 2012

David

Carlos

Smit

Cabrera

When not traveling or working

Carlos Cabrera is a freelance concept artist and illustrator

overseas, David resides in

from Argentina. He has worked

Amsterdam, freelancing in concept art, illustration and art

on several AAA video games such as F.E.A.R, Section 8, Ghost Recon and Aliens

direction jobs. It’s only when he sleeps that he’s not

Colonial Marines and films like Black Swan. In his

busy! He is always on the search for great projects, opportunities, stories, good music, and a nice cold

free time he does free videos tutorials for his website

beer.

to help other artists get started.

http://www.davidsmit.com/

http://www.artbycarloscabrera.com/

david@davidsmit.com

carloscabrera@gmail.com

Markus

Lovadina

Markus Lovadina (malo) is currently working as a Creative Director in the advertising industry, as well as a freelance Concept Artist/Illustrator. Over recent years he’s had the opportunity to work for companies such as Acclaim Entertainment, Activision and Intel. He has also worked on a couple of movie projects and a variety of book covers too.

Would You Like To Contribute To 3DCreative Or 2DArtist Magazines?

We are always looking for tutorial artists, gallery submissions, potential

http://malosart.blogspot.com/ malo74@gmx.de

interviewees, ‘making of’ writers, and more. For more information, please send a link to your work to: simon@3dtotal.com

Image by Tuomas Korpi

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Issue 073 January 2012

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“Little ideas just pop out during the day. If they are any good, I write them down on my notebook or cell phone�

Tuomas Korpi Interview Hi Tuomas, it is a pleasure to catch up with you. There is no bio or information about you on your site, so I was wondering if you would be willing to tell us about yourself and how you ended up the CG industry?

Hi, thanks. I’m a 26 year old concept artist, matte painter and illustrator from Helsinki, Finland. I’ve been working in the CG industry professionally for about six years now, mostly in commercial productions and a few game and movie projects.

I think it all started in the early 2000s when The Art of Star Wars exhibition was visiting my hometown Helsinki and The Lord of The Rings movies hit the theaters about the same time.

This whole visual effects industry I had very little or no idea about just opened for me at that moment. Seeing the amazing concept art and matte paintings created for the original Star Wars trilogy just blew my mind! I think that’s the very first time I thought, “This is what I want to do for living”.

I was a really keen drawer at the time and spent a lot of time with computers, programming, making homepages etc., so it was quite natural that I started to combine my two favorite hobbies at some point. I started digital painting in the

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Issue 073 January 2012

Interview

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Tuomas Korpi

Issue 073 January 2012

Tuomas Korpi Interview

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Issue 073 January 2012

Interview

Tuomas Korpi

early 2000s and posted my paintings on forums like CGTalk and ConceptArt.org for critique.

Like many, I ended up in the industry through my personal works and being active on the forums. A Finnish production house was looking for a digital artist and they contacted me after seeing some of my works online. I actually wasn’t convinced about the quality of my work at that time and first turned down the job opportunity. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to have a good friend that convinced me to follow that path and take the position offered to me.

And here I am today!

Your route into the CG industry seems to be quite a common one and I think it is great that people can use forums to progress in their careers. If you could give any advice to anyone trying to use forums in this way, what would it be?

I think it’s important that you are an active member of the right community. There are dozens of different sites, forums and chat groups that focus on different types of work. The biggest communities, like CGSociety, CGHUB and ConceptArt.org, are probably the best sites to promote yourself, but the level of quality is very high and it might be hard to get noticed.

“I might be a concept artist, a retouch artist, a matte painter or an art director” In my opinion it is always best for you if you’re in a community where people are more talented and experienced than you are! Comment on other people’s work, give good critique and people are more likely to remember you and give you feedback. Promoting yourself shouldn’t be the main focus, but you should focus on having a good time and showing your most recent work. concept based or does it entail creating

years now. Most of our clients are advertising

Can you tell us a little about your current

images for advertising and things like that?

agencies, but we do not design or create

work? I understand that you work at PIÑATA

Yes, I’ve been working at the animation and

advertisements ourselves. We focus on the

in Helsinki. Is your work for them entirely

illustration studio PIÑATA for about three

things we do best: animation, illustration

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Issue 073 January 2012

Tuomas Korpi Interview and concept design. We also have gaming

at the same time. Depending on the projects we

In an animation production, for instance, I’m

companies, studios and production houses as

are working on, I might be a concept artist, a

focusing first on the concept art; developing the

clients.

retouch artist, a matte painter or an art director.

look of the animation, the style and design of

But you could say I’m focusing on visual

elements. After that my role is more of an art

I’m also a co-founder and partner of the studio

development and art direction the majority of

director, overseeing the 3D models, textures,

so there’s usually a variety of things I’m doing

the time.

lighting etc.

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Issue 073 January 2012

On a different project I might work as an illustrator or matte painter, following the direction and style given to me. It’s a very small company of about a dozen people so everybody has to be really, really versatile with their work.

I am sure you would agree that a concept artist requires a particularly good imagination and this is something I see in abundance in your work. How do you start to develop an idea, and how do you encourage your imagination to produce fantastic and original results?

Little ideas just pop out during the day. If they are any good, I write them down on my notebook or cell phone. But they need to be developed a little further from there. I usually start by working on the basic form of a concept and then move on to details or the environment depending on the view point I’ve selected. For example, I might have an idea for a strange

Interview

Tuomas Korpi

steampunk device and I try to figure out what kind of culture or environment could produce or use such a strange device. If I’m working on an environment concept, I usually want to enhance the feeling of personality and “realism” through design.

Sometimes my ideas are just settings for personal visual experimentation. I might feel very inspired by some amazing light condition I’ve seen and want to capture that in my painting. Then I try to use elements and materials in my painting that enhance that experience I’ve had.

In the best case scenario I can combine all

Heart of the Forest. Can you remember what

The concept of this painting is actually based

these three aspects into one painting: the

inspired you to paint that picture?

on an old painting I did years ago. It had these

personal visual experimentation, an idea and a

Thanks. It’s definitely one of my most liked

glowing onion-shaped houses on a riverbank

good story to reflect that idea.

paintings and I’m very happy with it too! It

and fireflies flying in a deep blue night, but I

reflects very much what I want my art to be –

was never quite happy with the composition or

I am a big fan of all of your work, but there is

something simple, beautiful and mysterious.

execution of the original painting. So – in a way

one image that stands out to me and blows

Something easy to look at that tickles your

– Heart of the Forest is a revisited version of

me away every time I see it and that image is

imagination.

that painting.

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Issue 073 January 2012

Tuomas Korpi Interview

It’s hard to remember what the inspiration for

the forest with him – in a lantern – even though

use one of them for the rest of your career

this painting originally was, but I think it was

he is leaving the heart of the forest behind. It’s

which one would you choose?

mostly something visual. I wanted to show

actually quite abstract to explain, now that I

No question, I would choose Photoshop. The

a dialogue between a warm, welcoming

think of it.

painting engine is much better in Painter, but

glow in the forest and the pale light of the moon. Forests, trees and nature in general are definitely my favorite subjects to paint and I love the general idea of living in the woods, surrounded by nature. It’s like this

“For me, Painter is still software that tries to mimic the feeling of painting traditionally”

with the improved features in Photoshop CS5 like rotating canvas, there isn’t really much that is missing. A lot of the time I find myself looking for some nice little adjustment or feature from Photoshop when I’m using Painter – but I have

welcoming, warm home in the middle of the

I notice that you are a proficient user of

forest. I tried to visualize the spirit of the

both Photoshop and Painter. What do you

forest through light. And maybe that guy is

think are the pros and cons of each piece

For me, Painter is still software that tries to

just trying to keep a little part of the spirit of

of software? If you were told you could only

mimic the feeling of painting traditionally. There

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to say I haven’t tried out the newest versions.

Issue 073 January 2012

Interview

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Tuomas Korpi

Issue 073 January 2012

are good and bad things about it. When I’m working on a computer I don’t want to feel so limited. The way colors are mixing and blending together, it’s nice, but if my work requires a use of textures and photos or I want to use layers in a more proficient way, then Painter just suddenly feels very slow and unorganized. For complex images, Photoshop is the only choice. I do a lot of photo compositing and matte painting in my work and Photoshop offers a wide range of tools that speed up the working process.

Then again, sometimes I feel Photoshop is still photo retouching software and the color palette and brush tools don’t really have anything to do with painting.

I noticed some really nice sketches on your website, and you mentioned earlier that you drew a lot before getting into CG. Do you still spend time getting sketches down on paper or do you find yourself working digitally 100% of the time now?

I still start my ideation process with plain pen and paper, doing small thumbnail sketches. I have filled many sketchbooks with those little doodles! It’s somehow more direct and intuitive to work on paper; it’s easier to focus on the right things. In Photoshop you might get carried away with unnecessary details and all the different options.

We also have the Helsinki Sketch Group gathering every Sunday in my home town. It’s just a few hours in a week, but it’s a good way to keep in touch with traditional media and discuss with other artists. I usually just put some ideas down roughly, but sometimes it’s more fun to really put effort into your drawing and render something very carefully for a change.

I would love to know where you draw your inspiration from, but rather than ask you about artists that influence you, I thought I would ask about what you do in your free time. Is there anything you like to do in your free time that helps generate new ideas for your paintings?

During the summertime I cycle a lot, which is a really meditative way of spending your free time. In Helsinki you can get out of the city

Interview

Tuomas Korpi

quite quickly and into the nature. It’s a way of

like to achieve. Is there a dream job that you

my professional dream: working on some big

emptying your mind and being out there and

would like to do one day?

film. My more artistic dream would be creating

breathing fresh air – it’s nice. Some of my ideas

Well yeah, maybe something to do with movies.

a carefully executed and directed, visually

come from those trips.

It’s just that small kid in me. Movies like Star

stunning short film one day.

Wars, Indiana Jones and Pixar animations Of course, movies, documentaries and books

inspired me to develop my skills and to get

A lot of artists seem to be tied to a genre of

are a great source of inspiration for me. I

into this industry and it’s something I really

art. For example, I look at some portfolios

really like to read about history and different

want to do for living one day too! I can’t name

that only contain sci-fi art. When I look at

cultures, watch scientific documentaries, nature

any studios or positions, but that’s probably

your work I see a huge variety of themes and

documentaries, space documentaries, what have you. And movies: animation, adventure, drama, horror – anything goes! I can spend a whole Saturday just sitting on my couch and watching movie after a movie, or go to a theater and watch a few flicks in a row.

I also love to cook in my free time, but I don’t recall generating any new ideas for my paintings there [Laughs]! It’s just a nice way to relax and make something real and enjoyable after spending the whole day in the digital world.

I find that artists are ambitious people. They always have a goal or something they would

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Issue 073 January 2012

Tuomas Korpi Interview image types. Do you have a favorite genre and do you avoid doing lots of similar work on purpose?

Yes, there’s definitely a lot of different themes and styles going on. I don’t deliberately try to avoid doing a lot of similar works, but it’s more like a process where I’m jumping from one favorite subject to the next. Nature and steampunk themes are my favorites and I really like to paint anything that is like a human habitat; fantasy cities and colonies. I can mix my interest for culture and architecture with nature and environmental themes. These might be more abstract themes and they aren’t so clear to see in my works. periods and then I’ve had more dark or positive

the different periods and the whole progress.

When it comes to style and technique, I try to

periods, that’s probably why you can see a

Also the new findings in art and light and color

push myself into doing something different and

variety of styles in my portfolio. If you’d put my

dynamics affect on my output of course, and

new. I’ve had more colorful and impressionistic

work on a timeline it would be so clear to see

keep me inspired.

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Issue 073 January 2012

Interview

Tuomas Korpi

Thanks for your time Tuomas. It has been great to take a look at your work and get to learn a little more about you.

Thanks, it’s been a pleasure.

Tuomas Korpi For more information please visit: http://www.tuomaskorpi.com/ Or contact him at: tuomas.korpi@gmail.com

Interview by: Simon Morse

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Issue 073 January 2012

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“The truth is that I still struggle when drawing and things rarely come out smoothly�

Julian Totino Sketchbook Sketchbook of Julian Totino This is the first drawing in my sketchbook (Fig.01). I usually start with a HB pencil and later change to a 2B. The truth is that I still struggle when drawing and things rarely come out smoothly.

I love this one, although I don’t know exactly why (Fig.02).

I did this one on a peaceful night a long time ago.

Often (not as much as I should do) I sit on the couch, put some music on and relax while drawing the first thing that comes into my head. This was the first thing that came to my head that night (Fig.03).

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Issue 073 January 2012

Sketchbook

Julian Totino

Fig.04 is based on a picture I found on Flickr.

Actually it was two pictures, one of a guy jumping, and another of a cat with an open mouth.

Fig.05 shows another image from the “couch session�.

I absolutely love World War pictures. Fig.06 is based on a picture I found on the net. I like his smile.

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Issue 073 January 2012

Julian Totino Sketchbook I really like this one because it came out smoothly without too much of a struggle. That happens almost never (Fig.07)!

Someone I know said this girl reminds her of the girl on the Morrissey video Every Day Is Like Sunday. Although I wasn’t trying to portray that girl, I bet I was thinking about her when I drew it (Fig.08).

This is a funny guy! I like the expression in this one (Fig.09).

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Issue 073 January 2012

Sketchbook

Julian Totino

I did Fig.10 with some Copic markers and used a picture as a reference.

The freaky little guy in Fig.11 was done with Copic markers and a Pentel brush.

I love when a drawing doesn’t make any sense (Fig.12).

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Issue 073 January 2012

Julian Totino Sketchbook

Look at that hair (Fig.13)!

Fig.14 is just doodles, without thinking.

I really like Fig.15. I wish I could render like this all the time.

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Issue 073 January 2012

Sketchbook

Julian Totino

I have moved now, but this is where I used to work (and live). This is the view from my couch. I did this one with Copic markers and a Pentel brush, which I love (Fig.16).

Fig.17 is a page full of nonsense sketches. I was killing time and listening to Nina Simone while doing this.

This is the view from my window. Nice, huh? I hate how tight this sketch is (Fig.18).

In Fig.19 you can see a WWII soldier. I draw a lot of these.

Julian Totino For more information please visit: http://www.totinotedesco.blogspot.com/ Or contact him at: juliantotino@yahoo.com.ar

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Issue 073 January 2012

Julian Totino Sketchbook

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Issue 073 January 2012

This month we feature: Serge Birault Markus Lovadina Simon Weaner Ferdinand Ladera Roma Cherepov Andreas Rocha Alexander Tooth Alexey Zaryuta Oleg Leshiy Shekhovtsov Ejiwa Ebenebe

The Gallery 10 of the Best

send us your images! | simon@3dtotal.com

Winter Travellers Andreas Rocha http://www.andreasrocha.com

Speeds Painting

rocha.andreas@gmail.com

Simon Weaner

(Above)

http://simonweaner.daportfolio.com/ simonweaner@gmail.com (Below)

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Issue 073 January 2012

The Towers of Keilah Ferdinand Ladera http://digitalhadz.blogspot.com/ digitalhadz@gmail.com

The Gallery 10 of the Best

send us your images! | simon@3dtotal.com

Down the Streets Markus Lovadina http://malosart.blogspot.com/ malo74@gmx.de

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Issue 073 January 2012

Caveman Roma Cherepov cherom81@gmail.com

King of the Mountain Alexander Tooth http://alextooth.com alextoothart@gmail.com

Mother Earth Ejiwa Ebenebe http://www.peppermint-pinwheel.daportfolio.com/ ejiwa_ebenebe@yahoo.com

Vanessa Lake and Tentacle Serge Birault http://www.sergebirault.fr serge.birault@hotmail.fr

NYC Alexey Zaryuta http://www.zaryuta.com zaryuta@gmail.com

Shadow and Corrupted Oleg Leshiy Shekhovtsov http://xleshiyx.deviantart.com/ art.leshiy@gmail.com

Chapter 3 - Red Riding Hood The ability to tell a story within your image is a real skill. There are so many things that need to be taken into consideration, the overall composition, what you do and don’t put in the scene and how to portray the emotion of those in the scene.

These are all things you must consider if you plan to lead the viewers gaze through the scene and make them understand the story behind it. In this series of tutorials illustration experts Simon Dominic Brewer and Blaz Porenta will be talking us through how to tell a story, using well known Fairy Tales which they will re-invent as the subject matter. This series could totally change the way you approach a digital painting.

Illustrating Fairy Tales Chapter 3: Red Riding Hood Chapter 3: Red Riding Hood Software Used: Photoshop

First of all, I would like to say a big thank you to 3DTotal for this awesome opportunity. It is rare for an artist to be commissioned for a project that he planned to do anyway.

From my early childhood I was hooked on all kinds of stories, legends and fairy tales, and for a couple of years now I’ve wanted to create my own version of some of them. I realized that the original versions of most fairy tales aren’t as kind and fluffy as they are portrayed these days.

Instead they are rather dark, horrific tales of cruel acts where the end to the story is usually death.

To create a horror painting you need to do more than just create scary characters. The composition, use of darks and lights, and the placement of characters are more important than their look. The best horror flicks aren’t necessarily those with the most blood and gore, but the ones that can establish the scariest mood. Showing less is sometimes more.

Creating a claustrophobic environment and selecting the very moment just before contact can help create the scary and tense mood we are after.

In my painting of Little Red Riding Hood I chose

guide the viewers’ eye around the image, as

to follow these rules. I hid most of the wolf’s

well as keep everything balanced (Fig.02).

body in the dark, put branches and fog on all sides of the image and depicted the moment

When I was happy with my sketch I started

where our little girl is still unaware of the danger

painting the main characters, beginning with the

behind her (Fig.01).

wolf. I gave him hands rather than paws and applied some human features to his face. This

At this point I didn’t care about details. All that

makes him look more like a menacing werewolf

mattered was the composition, main light source

than just a wolf.

and tone values. To do this I used Photoshop’s

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basic Round brush. I was careful when placing

Although there is no logical explanation for the

everything inside the grid I created. This helped

strong light source coming from the bottom left

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Issue 073 January 2012

Chapter 3: Red Riding Hood

Illustrating Fairy Tales

part of the image, it helps creating a strong atmosphere. As long I applied this light to everything else in the image it didn’t matter why it is there; I knew the viewer would take it for granted (Fig.03a – 3b).

I redesigned some parts of the girl and her outfit. I added the wolf’s other hand and worked on his silhouette, giving him bristled hair on his back. I also started defining the surroundings by smudging the fogged parts with some hard textured brushes. I love using textured brushes at an early stage of the painting as it gives a finished look to the image. This way you

don’t need to define everything; the textures

painting hair on wolf’s back and hands and, of

themselves will give the hints you need (Fig.04).

course, changing little girl’s face. I decided to do this because I felt she already knew something

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At this point I started working all over the place

bad was going to happen. I needed to catch the

by defining the skulls and bones at the bottom,

exact moment of her turning around. Once that

creating ground textures with scattered brushes,

was done there was much better interaction

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Issue 073 January 2012

Illustrating Fairy Tales Chapter 3: Red Riding Hood between her and the monster behind her, although she can’t see it clearly yet due to the hood she’s wearing (Fig.05).

These kinds of details always help build a stronger story in paintings. You shouldn’t be afraid of making changes during your painting process as long as they help improve the final image. I rarely stay 100% true to my sketch, just because there are so many things that pop out while I am working on something. Sometimes they are lucky mistakes. Other times I see familiar shapes inside random textures that inspire me to explore new directions.

Now that I had a strong core to the image I was able to go and play some more with the environment and light effects. For branches in the upper part of the image I used some custom brushes I created with a photo references. This is a quick way to generate a believable and complex treetop base, but it will always need further work to avoid it looking like a lazy photo placed inside the painting. Using these kinds of brushes only gives you silhouettes and you will then need to add light and shadow to get the final form.

For the lower branches I went with more organic shapes, like tentacles with thorns reaching for our little girl and closing her path. I also used a lot of layers set to Overlay mode with orange hues to make the painting more vivid and full of contrast (Fig.06).

It was also time to use all kinds of brushes to

details here and there, which can be hard to

make it look more painterly. In my personal

achieve with plain brushes. Use them carefully

opinion, traditional paintings evoke much more

in chosen places. They should serve only as a

emotion than those created digitally. Their

cosmetic touch up and nothing more.

unique brush strokes and imperfections bring

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them to life. I strongly recommend downloading

And this is it for this tutorial. I hope everyone

brush packs from great artists such as Goro and

found at least something useful in it. If anyone

Barontieri (Fig.07).

has any questions at all, don’t hesitate to ask.

In my last step I played with the contrast more,

Blaz Porenta

added the moon in the back and placed a

For more information please visit:

couple of canvas textures on top of the image

http://www.blazporenta.com/

(Fig.08). Once again, be very careful how you

Or contact him at:

use these textures. They are great for random

blaz.porenta@gmail.com

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Issue 073 January 2012

! tion W cip O s N b

E d, BL loa

Su

A w IL l Do

n

A ita AV, Dig

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LEVEL UP YOUR DIGITAL SCULPTING SKILLS

TRAIN WITH KILLER ARTISTS 3D CHARACTER DESIGN SERIES WITH SCOTT PATTON

In this two volume series, Scott Patton shows the processes he uses to create a 3D character for feature films. The first volume explores Patton's fast and efficient method for concept sculpting, skipping the 2D sketch phase all together and designing the character entirely within ZBrush®. He covers everything from blocking out the forms and fleshing out the muscles, to adding props, detailing with alphas and posing the character. The second volume covers methods for creating a final color rendering using ZBrush and Photoshop®. Patton cr shows how he squeezes the most from ZBrush’s powerful renderer to create both a wide and close-up shot of the character. He then shares creative Photoshop tips and tricks to quickly get to a finished piece of concept art from the ZBrush renders, covering topics such as adding and refining skin texture, hair, eyes, shadows and scars. Patton also discusses how to create backgrounds that enhance the character and composition. overall ov

All Tutorials Are Now Available As DVDs, Digital Downloads, And Part of The Online Training Subscription

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Chapter 1 | September Issue 069 Ideas, Sketching and the Hippies Chapter 2 | October Issue 070 Design and Hippie Anatomy Chapter 3 | November Issue 071 Designing Hippie-Pippie Space-Vans!

Chapter 4 | December Issue 072 Illustrations Chapter 5 | This Issue From Concept to Story Chapter 6 | Next Issue What to Do With These Hippies?

Almost every artist gets to a point when they decide that they want to start a new and unique project that they have total creative control of.

When you get to this point it can be hard to decide what exactly it is that you would like to do. How do you come up with ideas? And how do you develop them and make them interesting? In this series David Smit, with the help of Nadia Karroue, will be showing us how to create an idea and turn it into a unique and interesting project. This series will be concentrating on David’s visually stunning self-made world called the Hippie-Pippie-Pocalypse and will have something for everyone, from idea generation techniques to design and painting advice.

Designing Your Own World Chapter 5: From Concept to Story Chapter 5 - From Concept to Story Software Used: Photoshop

This month we’re going to talk about how we came up with the story for the comic, which is actually pretty lame because no one has even read the story yet, since there are still no finished pages. Yes, we are writing an article about writing a story that hasn’t been written yet.

That’s how we roll.

From Vague Ideas to Plot So you built yourself a world and now it is time to populate it with some people who have overcome a bunch of problems. We already established in a previous article that we’re not doing the epic quest to defeat evil thing. No one is taking over the world, nothing is being destroyed and there is no revenge being sought

different characters cramped up together in a

thrown a punch, he’s not stoic but is caring and

by anyone.

tiny spaceship flying through space in a hurry

he doesn’t like conflict. Believe it or not, we think

because they are trying to get to a festival planet

these are amazing qualities for a guy to have!

called the HippiePippiePocalypse.

It’s pretty obvious that his quest is to like and

Instead we’re doing a road trip story because it fits the world much better. Even though the

accept his awesome self (Fig.01).

setting is a place where virtually nothing is

Since we kind of wrote the story to show off the

wrong at all, you still need some suspense!

world we created, we ended up with characters

The Cyborg Pilot

So the idea is that you have a couple of

that were almost like allegories for different

Then there’s Kira. She’s hard working,

aspects of the HippieVerse. But at the same

organized, assertive and annoyed by how

time, they were people we knew from our own

lazy and passive other people can be.

lives. This is actually pretty weird, because we

Everyone always relies on her to do and think

set out to write about a utopia, but what we ended up with hit pretty close to home.

The Boy Next Door Dingo is the standard, in a way. He hasn’t done much with his life. He doesn’t know his worth and feels useless. Sound familiar? But there’s more to him.

of everything, and because she really isn’t a slacker, she ends up with all the work. But that doesn’t mean she actually wants to be that person. Just like Dingo is an ode to sensitive boys, Kira is an ode to girls who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. They’d love to give away some of their burdens, but they don’t trust other people to carry those burdens correctly. Not even for the most mundane tasks!

Can you guess what her quest is going to be?

She’s going to learn to let go a little (Fig.02).

In a way he’s an ode to today’s young men who are nothing like

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the action hero psychopaths

The Awkward Robot

that you see in movies. He’s

SumSum is a retired robot. SumSum was one

not a smooth flirt, has never

of a series of experimental actor bots that were

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Issue 073 January 2012

Chapter 5: From Concept to Story

Designing Your Own World

made a long time ago. It was made to learn how to be and what to do. Send an actor bot to a nursery school, and it’ll become the best nanny it can be. Let it hang out with engineers and that’s what it’ll become. Even its gender identity depends entirely on its surroundings. Because of this, actor bots that change their surroundings regularly can come across confused. They never fully become something (or themselves, whatever that may mean) and are always awkwardly trying to adapt to their surroundings.

SumSum’s role in the story is to be an awkward and funny mirror to the other characters. Maybe it’ll have a quest of its own at some point; we don’t know that yet (Fig.03).

The Robot that Wants to Rule the World Gippy is a tiny navigation bot with illusions of grandeur. He thinks he’s the master of all humans because he’s super-important. But everyone just treats him like he’s not even there!

The irony is that he is actually really important.

Navigating through the cosmos without him would be impossible for the crew. But they

She has always studied the things she was

amount of experience with psycho-actives,

continue to treat him as a silly toy, that is, if they

interested in, instead of what she thought she

people often perceive her as weird and asocial.

notice his tiny dictator voice at all. I guess he’s

was supposed to study. She travels the cosmos,

They completely change their minds about

comic relief and social glue (Fig.04).

looking for plants and fungi with interesting

her, however, when they find out that she’s a

chemical effects on the human mind and body.

scientist. You see, in the HippieVerse scientists

This lifestyle has had an interesting effect on her

are what rock stars and celebrities are for us

DeeDee is a perfect example of what can

personality. Because of her lack of experience

today (Fig.05).

happen if you fully make use of the HippieVerse.

with fellow humans, and maybe an excessive

The Mad Scientist

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Issue 073 January 2012

Designing Your Own World Chapter 5: From Concept to Story The Comfort Blanket Owly is DeeDee’s best friend. There really isn’t much about him except enthusiasm, love and, of course, the cuddly cute factor. But even so we found out that Owly is absolutely necessary in the story. For some reason, DeeDee without Owly is a tragic character. Everything about her just seems so painfully lonely when Owly isn’t there. I guess you could compare it to Finn and Jake from Adventure Time. Imagine Adventure Time without Jake the Dog, but only Finn the Human. How sad is that? Just a little kid alone in a world of monsters. It’s super sad! (Fig.06 – 07).

The Lesson of Today Tiny ship plus crazy people equals fun. Who knows, maybe next month we can finally show you guys some pages! See you next month!

(Fig.08).

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Issue 073 January 2012

David Smit and Nadia Karroue For more information please visit: http://www.davidsmit.com http://vg-heart.blogspot.com/ Or contact them at: david@davidsmit.com nadia@vg-heart.com

A small selection of VFS Animation & Visual Effects alumni credits include | 2012 | Zeke Norton, Previsualization Supervisor | Jamie Bowers, Texture Artist | Christine Peterson, Digital Compositor | Anuj Patil, Senior Technical Director | Alice in Wonderland | Ken Kaiser, Animator | Veronica Marino, Compositor | Phan Wiantrakoon, Animator | John Iskandar, Visual Effects Artist | Jacob Curtis Miller, Digital Artist | Geeta Basantani, Digital Matte Painter | Andrew Lawson, Character Animator | Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Zack Mathew, Animator | Wilson Mui, Team Lead Animation | Avatar | Michael Cozens, Lead Animator | Tamir Diab, Technical Director | Patrick Kalyn, Animator | Chrystia Siolkowsky, Motion Editor | Ben Sanders, Animator | Alfredo Luzardo, Layout Technical Director | Aaron Gilman, Character Animator | Jami Gigot, Texture Artist | Bioshock 2 | Jacob Palmer, Animator | Bob’s Burgers | Tammy Dubinsky, Animator | Nathan Keane, Animation Effects | Jake Biberdorf, Animation Supervisor | Coraline Brian Demoskoff, Animator | The Dark Knight | Gia Sadhwani, Digital Effects Artist | Freddy Chavez, DMR Compositor | Pietro Ponti, Lead CG Lighting Artist | Dead Rising 2 | Fredrick Fassé, Animator | Dead Space 2 | Wayne Gonsalves, Environment Art Lead | Despicable Me | Justine Codron, Lighter | District 9 | Neill Blomkamp, Director/Co-Writer | Shawn Walsh, Visual Effects Executive Producer | Samson Wong, Matchmove Artist | Robert Bourgeault, Lighting Lead | Richard Sur, Lighting Technical Director | Paul Copeland, Visual Effects Artist | Julianna Kolakis, Creature Texture Painter | Jelmer Boskma, Modeler | James Stewart, Creature Supervisor | Derek Stevenson, Matchmove Lead | Drag Me to Hell | Thomas Schelesny, Visual Effects

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Creative concepts using google sketchup

Too many 2D artists using 3D in your pipeline will seem very alien. However in certain situations it can provide you with the help you need to create quick and accurate concepts. 3D can be used as a base in many forms of 2D art, but it is never more useful than when creating illustrations of non-organic structures and vehicles. In this series our artists will be showing us how to use Google’s free modeling software SketchUp to create a base for our Digital Paintings of a Vehicle. If this is something you have never tried before it could open your eyes to new and exciting possibilities.

November Issue 071 Chapter 01 | All-Terrain Vehicle December Issue 072 Chapter 02 | Drop Ship This Issue Chapter 03 | Submarine

Download Introduction to Google SketchUp

Sci-Fi Vehicles Chapter 03 - Submarine Chapter 03: Submarine Software Used: Google SketchUp and Photoshop

Introduction In this tutorial you will learn how to create a futuristic submarine from scratch. We will begin with a 3D base made in Google SketchUp and then add textures and tweak it in Adobe Photoshop to create an illustration. I use 100% of these techniques on a daily basis, whether it is for an illustration or for games companies.

Google SketchUp is a neat tool that can really speed up your workflow.

Before we start doing anything we need to find some references of what is that we want to paint. This is a very important and crucial process for any illustration, since we don’t want to lose the focus of our main subject once the creative process begins. In this case we need to search for submarine pictures, particularly ones with blue tones on them like you would see in movies or military archives.

Once we have enough references it is time to draw some small thumbnails. What we are looking for here is a futuristic design for our submarine. In Fig.01 you can see what I came up with.

SketchUp 3D Base

create parts in is not crucial as when you are

Now we can use the Push/Pull tool to extrude

done you can easily group everything together.

the object, as you can see in Fig.03. Select the

I decided that F is the design that comes closest

face on the end and use the Scale tool to shrink

to the futuristic look we’re trying to produce. The

What we are doing at this point is basically

next step is to open Google SketchUp, select

drawing the submarine from a top perspective in

the Line tool from the toolbar and draw a shape

SketchUp. Modeling both sides is not needed,

Once we have this shape, repeat the previous

similar to the one in Fig.02. This will become the

since when you have half of the object you

step several times until you create a curve

tail for our submarine later. Start modeling the

can flip it to save time and guarantee that it is

like the one in Fig.04. You can then finish this

submarine sections. At this point the order you

perfectly symmetrical.

section by continuing to add parts to it (Fig.05).

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page 57

it, which will create a sort of Bevel effect.

Issue 073 January 2012

Chapter 03 - Submarine

Sci-Fi Vehicles

Now that we have half an object finished we need to select all the objects on the screen and group them (right click > Group). Once this is done you can just copy the grouped object and paste it anywhere else on the canvas (make sure it’s not on top of your object) and make a mirror to obtain the second half of the submarine’s tail. The process is easy enough.

Right click over the object and select the Flip Along option. Select the axis you want to flip; in my case it was the red axis. Now you should have both objects aligned next to each other, as you can see in Fig.06. Select the Move tool from your main toolbar and select any corner of the cloned object. Once you have one picked slowly drag your mouse to snap that corner to the original, as you can see in Fig.07.

And that is it for the tail. All you need to do

use Scale on both faces. Use this on both the

simple cylinder and the bevel technique we

top and the bottom faces to achieve a cylindrical

can now create propellers and position them

shape, as you can see in Fig.09 – 10.

on both sides of the submarine (Fig.14). Now we only have to model the bridge following the

now is repeat the process for the hull. Do the same as before and draw the top view of the

Select both of the front faces of the tube and

same steps as we used to model our tail and

hull. Remember we are only drawing half of the

extrude again to create the two bridges that

propellers. Shape, push, scale, group and clone

object as we will clone the other half later.

connect the hull with the submarine front

– easy as pie (Fig.15).

(Fig.11). Now we just have to model the front Once you are happy with the shape (Fig.08)

using the reference thumbnail we drew (Fig.12).

We have now finished modeling all the important parts of the submarine. Now all we need to do

use the Push/Pull and Scale tools again. This time, shrink the top face of the object. The main

Group, duplicate and join everything the same

is combine each object, make it a group and

difference with this part is that we are going to

way as you did with the tail (Fig.13). With a

deform it with the Scale tool if the final shape

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Issue 073 January 2012

Sci-Fi Vehicles Chapter 03 - Submarine doesn’t seem quite right. In my case I had to stretch it a little so it had the same length as the thumbnail (Fig.16 – 17).

Now that we have finished the modeling stage we need to go to File > Export > 2D Graphic and export the image to Adobe Photoshop. If you like you can use a rendering plugin like Podium or V-Ray to create a more realistic image.

Photoshop Textures For this stage we can use some textures. I found my textures at CGTextures.com. We use these to add more detail to our futuristic submarine with a couple of simple techniques that anyone can learn in a few minutes.

Firstly we need to paint over all the visible faces of our submarine and leave it clean (Fig.18).

We also need to create a mask of the entire submarine to help us later when we need to paint the background. Having all these elements ready means we can start using the color and atmosphere references we gathered at the beginning. The first step will be to paint a dark blue gradient (almost black) to light blue over

It will probably be the case that the turbine

Now that we have our texture in the right

our background (Fig.19).

texture is not in the same perspective as the

perspective, change the blending mode to

submarine. To fix this we need to use the

Overlay so that it blends with our submarine.

To texture the submarine’s hull I chose an

Transform tool (Ctrl + T) along with the Wrap

If part of your texture ends up covering the

interesting texture that belonged to an old plane

function. Deform the texture to come up with a

background use the previously created mask to

turbine. Cut out the shape you want and get rid

cylindrical shape, as you can see in Fig.21.This

erase it and avoid fighting with the Photoshop

of the part you don’t need. Don’t worry too much

is a technique I use a lot to avoid having to look

Lasso tool. You results will vary, but it should

about it being perfect at this stage (Fig.20).

for a picture with perfect perspective.

end up looking something like Fig.22.

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Issue 073 January 2012

Chapter 03 - Submarine

Sci-Fi Vehicles

With the same technique add detail to the submarine propellers and to the front of the ship.

You can see my progress in Fig.23 – 27.

If any of the textures don’t look nice set to Overlay try other blending options or even adjust the colors to match the image. Anything goes!

In Fig.28 you can see how the image looks now with the newly applied textures.

New Shapes and Final Details With your favorite brush add detail to the shape of you futuristic submarine. Keep in mind where

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Sci-Fi Vehicles Chapter 03 - Submarine

the light comes from. In this case it comes from above and is a light blue color. Start adding details by adding small strokes, as you can see in Fig.29. Add an army-green gradient from top to bottom. This will make the submarine shape pop from the background.

The next step is to create the lights with some simple white lines. Once you have done this, apply a light blue outer glow to them to create the volumetric effect that people love so much.

Search the internet for a caustic texture to apply to the whole submarine using the same Transform/Wrap technique we used earlier (Fig.30). The caustic texture will need to be set to Color Dodge blending mode, which gives the illusion of having the water reflected over the submarine.

At this point we are almost there. We just have to do some minor tweaks here and there. The submarine shape was right, but I thought of another way to give it a futuristic appearance.

This is the fun part of the whole process, because this is when we add small details to really sell the image (Fig.31). A communist star was perfect to give my submarine history. I also added other small details like the bubbles on the propellers and the text on the side.

The background looked a tad dull so I decided to add a mine or two to enrich the illustration and make it more fun and interesting to the viewer. To do this I selected part of the background and quickly added detail. I did this on a different layer to be able to clone it later and create a minefield.

Once you have your ocean full of dangerous mines, select the mines closer to the camera

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and use a Blur filter to add fake depth of field.

I also added a lens flare simulating the sun in

Chapter 03 - Submarine

Sci-Fi Vehicles

Screen mode.

I hope you have enjoyed working on this as much as I did. Have fun creating your own futuristic vehicles (Fig.32).

Carlos Cabrera For more information please visit: www.artbycarloscabrera.com Or contact him at: carloscabrera@gmail.com

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Myths, legends and fantasy creatures have always been influential when it comes to digital art. In fact, many artists will never really stray too far from these sorts of themes and ideas. In this series a selection of stunning artists will be taking this popular subject and exploring some of its more diverse and lesser known characters. Throughout the series each artist will be given a brief for a character which they will need to interpret and turn into an illustration. To make things a little more interesting this will be done by not one but two artists, one using Photoshop and the other using Painter. This will not only show some of the differences between the two pieces of software, but will also show how the same brief can be interpreted in two different ways. This month Matt Dixon and Simon Dominic Brewer tackle the Charybdis.

Painting Creatures from Mythology Chapter 1: Charybdis

Chapter 01 - Charybdis Software used: Photoshop

Brief In Greek mythology, the Charybdis or Kharybdis was once a beautiful naiad and the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia. She took the form of a huge bladder-like creature whose face was all mouth and whose arms and legs were flippers, and who swallowed huge amounts of water three times a day before belching them back out again, creating whirlpools.

First Thoughts This is a well-balanced brief. It provides some background for the creature, a partial description of her physical characteristics and explains what she does without giving unnecessary detail.

Everything needed for a solid design is there, but there’s plenty of room to be creative and have fun.

Before picking up a pen or pencil, it’s a good

in the final rendering. It seems that there are

idea to take a little time and dissect the brief.

two ways to approach the design; either to

Identify the different elements provided and how

start with a bladder-like shape and try to add

they might impact on the design of the creature.

design elements or to use other elements of her

Naiads are graceful and beautiful water nymphs.

description as a starting point and try to develop

Perhaps some aspect of this past form could be

the design from there.

evident in the final design? This could manifest physically or maybe as a mood or emotion – for

Though some kind of bloated beast is inevitable,

example, sadness at her lost beauty or anger at

I’m concerned that using the bladder shape as a

her transformation.

starting point will limit design choices and result in an uninteresting creation. Beginning at some

Poseidon and Gaia are significant figures in

other point and finding a way towards a final

Greek mythology. Though Charybdis is more

design forces intelligent and deliberate choices,

obscure, her parentage would suggest a

which tend to give more depth to a concept.

powerful character. “A huge bladder” does not

That seems the more appropriate choice in this

immediately suggest a particularly interesting

case.

creature. A giant balloon with fins stuck to it would be a very lazy design, so care must be

Rough Ideas

taken to avoid this route.

To me, the most appealing element of the description of Charybdis is that she was once

Some indication of whirlpools and Charybdis

a naiad. This sharp contrast to her current

belching or swallowing water should be seen

form is interesting, and the transformation

in the finished illustration. This also poses a

from beauty to beast seems an important part

possible problem as large amounts of water

of the creature’s story and possibly suggests

entering or leaving the creature’s mouth could

her personality. Narrative elements, however

obscure large parts of her body.

subtle their manifestation in the final design,

Getting Started

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are always fun to explore and tend to suggest greater depth in a design than visual cues alone.

The first step in any design is always to find a

They also help an artist to connect with their

starting point. Choosing where to begin and why

creation as a living thing rather than a collection

will set the tone of the entire design process.

of two-dimensional shapes. With this in mind,

They key visual attribute of Charybdis seems

I’ll begin my design of Charybdis with a rough

to be the idea of her being a huge bladder-

sketch of how she may have appeared as a

like creature and this will need to be obvious

naiad (Fig.01).

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Chapter 1: Charybdis

Painting Creatures from Mythology

Using this image as a starting point I can start to consider how she may have changed into the creature described in the brief. I can explore different ideas by mutating her humanoid body. This evolutionary approach to design will generally spark more interesting thoughts than leaping straight towards the end result and, in my opinion, is much more enjoyable!

Initially I’m just concerned with the principle shapes and establishing an overall form that is pleasing to the eye, while satisfying the requirements of a bladder, flippers and a face

shape and humanoid elements. The suggestion

seems a suitable match for her bloated shape.

which is all mouth (Fig.02).

of shoulders and the indication of an upper

Adding damage and texture to her body will

torso above the bladder are familiar anatomical

give an impression of age and make her appear

First sketches should be quick and loose. A

elements that help to make the connection

more monstrous (Fig.03).

speedy exploration of ideas is more important

between this creature and a naiad.

than detail at this stage. Consider how the

Presentation

transformation to sea beast may have occurred.

Development

Did her legs fuse together into a tail? Which part

Now the rough sketch can be worked up to

ready to be presented in a final image. Refer

of her body grew to become bladder-like?

add definition and details. Again, keep things

back to the brief and first thoughts to consider

free and fluid. Try to justify all decisions and

how she should be portrayed. Are any elements

Analyze the first sketches. Even if the designs

keep shapes consistent so the design has a

of the brief not clearly shown in her design that

are broadly similar, one or two will usually feel

consistent flow. Choose a neutral pose for

could be emphasized in the finished illustration?

more successful than the others when viewed

this stage of the process: a clear view of your

In my final image, I want to establish Charybdis

side by side. Try to understand why a particular

creation makes it much easier to concentrate

as the huge beast described in the brief.

design is appealing as you choose which to

on the design without the distraction of

Including objects to act as a scale reference is

develop further, as those aspects should be built

foreshortened limbs or obscured body parts.

the best way to do this. A vessel teetering on

upon in the final image.

In keeping with the evolutionary theme of

the lip of a whirlpool seems a good choice as it

humanoid to beast, I’m imagining Charybdis as

will add a sense of drama and peril in addition to

Rough C is my choice to work up. I feel it has

an aquatic mammal similar to a whale or walrus.

showing the size of the creature.

the best balance between the bladder-like

That suggests a tough, blubbery hide, which

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Painting Creatures from Mythology Chapter 1: Charybdis To further emphasize the scale of Charybdis, I’ll show her rising out of the sea and set a low viewpoint. This will give the impression that the viewer is looking up at the beast, suggesting that she rises high into the sky. Placing her out of the water also allows for a better view of Charybdis. Including the jagged cliffs of some inhospitable island in the background will also help to define scale.

Set up the basic composition with simple shapes to begin with as this will make it much easier to find a balance. Try to deal with the image as a whole rather than focusing on any single aspect (Fig.04).

To quickly lay in values, I place the sketch on a

Some complimentary orange hues will also be

Once a simple layout is established, add details

new layer set to Multiply and work with a large

included to add interest. I’ll also use a unique

as necessary (Fig.05).

brush on the layer below. Once a rough pattern

accent color to draw attention to the sinking

of values is established, I flatten the image and

ship.

Next, consider values. Here is where the lighting

work into it to add detail (Fig.07). Charybdis is

and mood is set up. What atmosphere suits your

now ready for color!

creation best? Moody? Sinister? Melancholy?

I block in a simple color scheme the same way as I lay in basic values. The value sketch

I want my final piece to be dramatic. A night

Painting

sky should provide a good background for

Think about the mood and lighting you have

beneath with a broad brush and opaque color.

Charybdis, whose horrible bulk will be strongly

chosen for your final image. What color scheme

At this stage, different portions of the image

illuminated against a crashing sea and tumbling

suits this best? I have chosen a cool color

can be colored on separate layers so that

rocks. Keeping the sky clear will help to suggest

scheme of blues and greens. These colors

adjustments may easily be made if necessary

the maelstrom before her is her work, not stormy

are traditionally associated with the ocean and

(Fig.08).

weather (Fig.06).

should support the nocturnal setting well too.

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is placed on a layer set to Multiply and I work

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Chapter 1: Charybdis

Painting Creatures from Mythology

Once basic colors are in place, the image is

Some subtle secondary light from an unseen

flattened and rendering can begin. I color pick

moon helps Charybdis to stand out from the

from within the image, working mostly from dark

background. The raging sea is created with a

to light within the established pattern of values. I

combination of deliberate marks and custom

want to ensure the form and shape of everything

brushes made from a simple scanned paint

in the image is well established before I move

splatter. Carefully placed, these splatter shapes

on to the next stage (Fig.09).

are a quick and effective way to add energy to the water (Fig.11).

Details are next. Charybdis is huge: small details will help to establish the size of her body

Some final detailing and the addition of some

without breaking up the large, simple shapes

stronger highlights completes the illustration.

that give her bulk and weight. Teeth help to pull

At all stages of the painting, I’m working with

the viewer’s attention towards her head, while

the full image in view so I can see how working

small details on the ship help it stand out better

in one part of the piece may affect another.

against the swirling sea (Fig.10).

Working up the image as a whole, rather than

tackling portions separately, is a good way to help retain the balance established in the early compositional sketches (Fig.12).

Conclusion Look back at the brief to see how it compares with the finished image. Every piece of work is an opportunity to learn, so this is a good opportunity to be critical of your work. What works? What doesn’t and what could have been done differently?

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I’m satisfied with my final illustration. It has drama, I think the sense of scale is effective and I’m pleased with the idea of a clear sky to show that the raging sea is the work of Charybdis.

The creature design is consistent with the brief and I think there’s just enough human anatomy in evidence to be able to imagine Charybdis as a raging leviathan, or a tortured soul bellowing with frustration at being trapped in her hideously transformed body. I’d be curious to know how different it would have been if I’d taken an alternative route. I guess the only way to find out is to go back and do it again!

Matt Dixon For more information please visit: http://mattdixon.co.uk/ Or contact him at: mail@mattdixon.co.uk

Chapter 1: Charybdis

Painting Creatures from Mythology

Chapter 01 - Charybdis Software used: Painter

Introduction According to Greek mythology the Charybdis is a huge, blubbery sea monster who long ago was transformed from a beautiful nymph who happened to be the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia. Now possessing a huge mouth and fins instead of limbs, she swallows vast quantities of sea water three times a day before disgorging it to create treacherous whirlpools. In this tutorial I’ll be depicting Charybdis in her monster form, rising from the depths to ensnare unwary fishermen with her turbulent belching. I’ll be using Painter 12 for the whole tutorial.

Concepts

Then I have a look to see which one is worth

want to show Charybdis in the act of creating

The first stage is to create some concepts for

taking forward. I don’t bother with colors at this

a whirlpool to drag an unwary boat into the

the creature. I sketch out a few rough ideas,

stage and instead concentrate on defining form

depths.

taking no more than ten minutes per piece.

through the use of values, that is, lights and darks. I quite like the idea of a fat turtle-looking

The problem I’m faced with is that if I depict this

beast so with that in mind, I go onto the next

from above the surface the swirling water will

step (Fig.01).

obscure Charybdis herself, whereas if I attempt

Beginning the Color Sketch

the scene from below I’ll have the same problem with the fishing boat. I therefore decide to split

I create a small canvas 900 pixels high in

the composition between underwater for the

the same aspect ratio as my final image will

bottom three-quarters of the canvas and open

be. Then using the Mixer palette, I create a

air for the rest. It’s a cross-section, as if the

palette of the colors I intend to use; turquoise

scene has been sliced vertically (Fig.02).

for the sea and the bulk of the creature, and

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a contrasting orange for the sky. Using these

I start with the sky, roughing in some clouds,

colors I begin to sketch out my composition. I

and the surface of the water, which is undulating

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Painting Creatures from Mythology Chapter 1: Charybdis

and choppy. Beneath the surface the effect of the sunlight decreases rapidly until at the bottom of the image the water is almost black.

The sunlight that penetrates the surface is not uniform and forms beams due to the turbulence of the water, much like sunlight passing through gaps in cloud. In terms of the coloration there

design. I search out a likely contender using

worthwhile playing about with the size and

will be more orangey light present in the water

Google images and use the image as a loose

contrast of your papers in order to get the most

close to the surface. As the light passes further

reference for my own (Fig.03).

pleasing effect (Fig.04).

blue/green in color. I exaggerate the turquoise

Resample the Image

Adding Basic Detail

hue for effect, but it is worthwhile noting that

Unfortunately my Painter has just crashed and

I start work on the monster’s head and upper

water is in fact blue, not colorless as is often

I’ve lost my Mixer palette! Rather than create

torso, making sure I don’t go too bright with

thought, and this is clearly visible in large bodies

another Mixer palette I use the Create Color Set

my values on account of the surface of the

of clear water. The deeper the water the deeper

From Image option on the Color Set palette,

water reflecting away a good deal of sunlight.

blue it appears.

which generates color swatches based on the

The closer an object is to the surface the more

colors I’ve already painted. Happily this isn’t

orangey light it will catch so this is why I include

part of the tutorial, just something I thought I’d

quite a lot of orange on the head and upper

Being that Charybdis is a character from Greek

mention in case anybody spots that my Mixer

torso, and less and less on the body as it fades

mythology it’s fitting that the boat is of Greek

palette has disappeared!

away into the murky depths.

I resize (or more accurately, resample) the

I pay attention at all times to the direction of my

image to full working size, which is 5000 pixels

light source in order to ensure the shadows are

tall, making sure to keep my aspect ratio

consistent. Later, I’ll be adding a mottled pattern

consistent with my specification. I often work

to simulate light shining through the waves, but

larger than the specification requires and then

for now I’m just treating the light source as I

downsize as my final step. This allows for finer

would in the open air (Fig.05).

into the depths it will become more and more

Using References

detail. I zoom in to 50% and with an Artists’ Oils

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brush, begin to dab in some basic detail. The

Adding Fine Detail

Artists’ Oils brush I use has Pressure-dependant

Once I’ve roughed in the features on the head

opacity and Grain set to 50%. The grain option

and torso I zoom in 100% for the detail. I don’t

allows the paper texture to show through the

usually have a plan as to which areas of the

strokes where the paint is thin. Papers are

image I’ll tackle first; I just make it up as I go

selectable from the Papers panel and it’s

along. This time I decide to complete the head

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Chapter 1: Charybdis

Painting Creatures from Mythology

and upper torso before going on to the rest of

pixel circular brush to sharpen the teeth and to

then dragging the cursor across the image, you

the image. As well as my Artists’ Oils brush I

create some more intricate textures around the

can rotate your canvas quickly and easily to

use a circular, grainy brush also set to Pressure

gums. Working this small doesn’t mean I should

any orientation. You can then paint just as you

dependant opacity and with a subcategory of

sharpen every line – that would make it too

would normally and when you’re done, reset

Grainy Soft Cover. I set this brush to around

clinical-looking – it’s more a way of accentuating

the orientation by double-clicking the icon or

18% Hue variability using the Color Variability

key areas to attract the viewer’s eye (Fig.08).

clicking the Reset Rotation icon in the Navigator.

panel. This gives a pleasing mottled effect to my strokes.

Tilting the Canvas

Rotating your image doesn’t affect the actual pixels so you can do it as many times as you

If you’re like me and drawing a good curved

like. You can also rotate by pressing Spacebar

I have deliberately avoided making the

line is a challenge at the best of times then you

and Alt and holding them down together as you

creature’s mouth too symmetrical so I can have

might find Painter 12’s Rotate facility useful. By

drag your cursor (Fig.09).

fun sprinkling teeth and wobbling fleshy flanges

clicking on the Rotate Page icon on the toolbar,

all over the place. As always I use the Navigator to move the canvas as I find it quicker and easier than the drag method (Fig.06).

Painting Texture Texture can be communicated via brush strokes and also via Paper texture, but it can also be manually painted. Here I add some imperfections to the shell and skin of Charybdis whilst always being mindful of the direction of the light source. I include some barnacles, which I paint by dabbing bright dots on top of darker dots, leaving a small crescent of shadow underneath. Variations in color can either be blended together or their boundaries left sharp.

I find it’s good to use a combination of these effects to produce some pleasing textures (Fig.07).

Super-fine Detail For the focus of the piece, which is the creature’s head and mouth, I include some very fine detail. I zoom in to 150% and use my 3 or 4

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Painting Creatures from Mythology Chapter 1: Charybdis

Turbulent Water The thought of painting water in motion is intimidating, but in actual fact it’s quite easy if you take it steady. The first step is to get the colors down. We’ve already got the hues sorted for the basic ocean depths so now we need to create a whirlpool effect. To do this I color pick brights and darks from the immediate environment and sketch a series of arcs in an inverted pyramid. I use a light pressure on my pen so that I don’t create anything too solid-looking. I try not to make the pattern of lights and darks too regular as I don’t want the

Last of all are the bubbles. I draw the bubbles in

careful not to make their positioning too regular.

whirlpool to look striped. The boat is almost at

little groups that either follow the swirl direction

When that’s done I choose a brighter orange

the centre of the whirlpool and this means that

of the whirlpool or cling to the surface in the

and basically just fill in the pattern I’ve created,

light reflected from its hull and sail will be picked

general vicinity. For each bubble I paint a dark,

taking care to leave more dark paint visible on

up by the swirling water. So, using browns and

slightly irregular arc representing the lower part

the side opposite the light source (Fig.11).

oranges I paint hints of reflection in the ocean

of the bubble and a bright highlight representing

below the boat (Fig.10).

the top. Inside the bubble I’ll sometimes dab

Blending the Clouds

a hint of color, either brown for reflection of

Blending is a two stage process. First I use

The next step is to blend our colors. I use a

the boat or the monster’s skin, or turquoise to

low-pressure dabs of the circular brush to add

version of my circular brush set to 0%

represent the depths beneath. I am careful to

blended highlights, and I also introduce some

Resaturation. It’s important not to blend too

make my bubbles slightly irregular and different

high contrast oranges into the shadows to add

much, so I calibrate my brush using the Brush

sizes to give a more authentic effect.

interest. Then, with the pure blending brush,

Calibration panel to respond only to hard

I blend the centres of the cloud billows whilst

pressure. This makes it easier to apply a light

Little Fluffy Clouds

touch.

To add interest the piece I’m going to paint

A good guide when blending at this stage is to

some fluffy clouds on the horizon. I’m

only blend colors that are similar. If you try to

deliberately going for a semi-surreal effect

blend across too great a range the result will

because I think that will fit in well with the overall

often be a muddy mess. I blend the rest of the

concept of mythology. Using my Artists’ Oils

sky using the same technique (Fig.12).

brush I paint a series of dark arcs directly onto

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taking care to leave the edges relatively sharp.

the rough texture of the sky. I press harder on

Waves

the side opposite the light source (the Sun)

When painting the surface of the ocean it’s

in order to indicate shadow. I make the arcs

important to use free-flowing strokes, blending

smooth and vary them slightly in size. I’m also

as required. I use quite a lot of orange to

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Painting Creatures from Mythology

represent light reflected from the sky. Some of the orange color penetrates the surface in the form of rays, but they decrease in size and intensity as depth increases. In the peaks of a couple of the waves I use high saturation color to communicate the transparency of the water, otherwise it would appear too solid (Fig.13).

Wavy Detail I zoom in to 100% to add fine detail on the ocean surface, which mainly comprises of flecks of foam from the crests of the waves.

I also include some extra foam and bubbles to emphasise the turbulence of the whirlpool (Fig.14).

Detailing the Boat Working loosely from my reference image I apply detail to the Greek fishing boat. I start by blending the colors on the sail and adding some more saturated orange to indicate sunlight passing through the material. The corners of the sail are out of direct sunlight, so I beef up the shadows in those areas. I paint the two characters at opposite ends of the boat, clinging on for dear life as the boat goes under. For the ropes supporting the sail I use the straight Line tool, pressing V to enter line mode and clicking on the start- and end-points. To return to normal painting mode I press B (Fig.15).

Undersea Lighting In the penultimate stage I want to add some additional lighting to Charybdis. When strong sunlight shines on turbulent water it creates

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Painting Creatures from Mythology Chapter 1: Charybdis a rippling pattern of highlights on objects beneath the surface and that’s what I’m trying to replicate here. Because it’s very difficult to judge the exact strength of the lighting I’m going to use a layer. In this way I can alter the layer’s opacity and even delete it and start again if it all goes wrong. I create my layer with a Lighten attribute and set it to 50% initially. With my circular brush I apply some low-pressure white strokes in vague diamond shapes across the monster’s body. I am careful not to extend these highlights into the shadows because they only occur where the light strikes directly. I try and mould the shapes to the body form too, so that it appears like we’re wrapping the effect around a real object rather than just applying a flat filter.

When I’m happy with the overall look I adjust the layer opacity, drop the layer to the canvas, zoom in 100% and tidy up here and there (Fig.16).

Final Tweaks At this point I take a break from the image and come back to it a few days later. This helps give me a fresh perspective. I think everything looks okay apart from a couple of dark clouds in the top right, which tend to draw the eye and detract from the action. With a big Artists’ Oils brush I paint over the clouds with brighter colors then use the circular brush and blender to merge the area back into the sky. Finally I resize my image down to 2480 x 3425 pixels, tweak the contrast a little to enhance the intensity and save the image as an uncompressed TIF file. And that’s Charybdis completed; I hope you enjoyed the process (Fig.17).

Simon Dominic For more information please visit: http://www.painterly.co.uk Or contact him at: si@painterly.co.uk

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“Music has (at least for me) the ability to intensify emotions.

Sometime I browse through my iTunes library and get drawn to one of them�

If anything is going to keep you off the streets at night it would be this creepy illustration, which is the creative work of Makus Lovadina.

In this Making Of he tells us how he set the mood for his stunning illustration and added the monsters to these empty streets.

Keep The Streets Empty Making Of Making Of Keep The Streets Empty Software Used: Photoshop

Introduction Music has been, and still is, a great source of inspiration for me. There is nothing better than the right song for the right image. Music has, at least for me, the ability to intensify emotions.

Blocking In

and get drawn to one of the songs. While

The Tools And Painting Process

listening to the sound again and again an

The Smudge tool is pretty cool when blending

in mind. In such cases I start by blocking in my

image starts to pop into my mind. This image

hard edges together. But you have to play with

rough shapes and colors without any thumbnails

was inspired while I was listening to Keep

the right settings. When I’m using the Smudge

or sketches. For this image I knew I wanted

The Streets Empty For Me by the band Fever

tool, Strength is set to 20% and the brush itself

to have a street scene where the camera was

Ray. The song is pretty intense and has a dark

is set to Sensitive pressure. The scale is 100%,

pretty close to my main building. The whole

brooding mood to it. The idea to paint my own

with no effect. Even if I work with the Smudge

scene would have a dark mood, with an old

interpretation of this was set into my mind.

tool I still use my layer technique. This mean

worn-out building facade. For the blocking

I have my base color on one layer and my

in I used mainly a Round Hard brush (set to

I already had some images in mind as to how

shadows and highlights on separate layers. By

Opacity) and a Square brush (set to Opacity

the final illustration could look and I wanted it to

using the Smudge tool on the highlight you’ll

too) as well. I used some textures from my own

have a more illustrative feeling in comparison to

get some pretty nice, happy color accidents.

library of textures for the wooden door and the

my other works. Normally I use a lot of custom

The only downside is that this will slow down

concrete (Fig.04).

brushes and shapes to speed up the process

your computer a bit (but this happen when using

but for this image I wanted to use a different

separate layers). When I’m happy with the look I

First Details

approach and just used three main brushes: a

merge the layers together and create a new one

I added some additional colors to the wall,

basic round, a painterly brush and a smudger.

for the next steps (Fig.01 – 03).

mostly gray values, and started to paint in

Sometime I browse through my iTunes library

As I mentioned before I already had an image

the first window details. The windows are barricaded with some wooden planks, which adds to the eerie feeling and the whole mood.

Until now everything was painted with the round and square brushes. The square brush was also used to show the first rough bricks (Fig.05).

More Details and the First Color Correction The next step was to get a bit more texture on the wall. I used my customized shapes to do this and erased any unnecessary parts. Using customized shapes or simply normal shapes automatically creates a new layer, which will give you the option to play with the layer’s opacity setting or just erase certain areas without affecting the background. Shapes can be made from most images. Just convert the image to a black and white image (not

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Issue 073 January 2012

Making Of

Keep The Streets Empty

grayscale), select the black areas to make a clipping path and add it to your shapes (main menu, below brushes). On top of that I added the first details to the door (Fig.06).

More Details and Textures My next step was to create a new layer for more color variations. This layer was set to Soft Light, which is a pretty easy and comfortable way to adjust and add colors. Depending on your specific needs, you can paint in the color with some brush strokes or using a soft gradient. I mostly used purple or blue tones for

the additional color. For the structure on the

use a mid-sized round hard brush for the base

wall I used a texture I shot quite a while ago.

shape and then start to erase certain areas for

It is pretty useful to collect your own texture

smaller details (e.g., claws etc.). This procedure

references. Just go out with a camera and shoot

goes back and forth until I’m happy with the

whatever you want, it’s really helpful (Fig.07).

overall shape. I also added some details as you

Blocking in the Creature

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can see on the door, the top of the image and the poster onto the wall, although I wasn’t sure if

When I was happy with the mood I started to

these were going to be in the final image. Again

block in some detail and the initial shape for

I added a new layer set to Soft Light and filled it

the creature. The creature’s shape was mainly

with a soft greenish gradient on the lower right

painted with the Hard Round brush. Normally I

side (Fig.08).

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Issue 073 January 2012

Keep The Streets Empty Making Of Creature Details

shadows on the top of the images. I created a

When I paint in the details for a creature or

new layer, drew in the shape with the Selection

character I like to work on separate layers

tool and filled the selection with a dark brownish

for mid-tones and the highlights as well. The

tone. The layer was then set to Multiply and the

technique I used here is described at the

Opacity was set to roundabout 45 – 50%. For a

beginning of this tutorial. For the details I used

three-dimensional feeling I selected the shadow

the Smudge tool with the special Smudge

area on the inner side of the window and moved

brush. You’ll get some pretty soft-tone blending

it downwards a bit. I used the color balance

and some happy accidents as well. If I like the

adjustment to shift the greenish tones to blue

look I merge the layers and create a new one

(Fig.10).

for painting/smudging more details and to add brighter highlights (Fig.09).

Color Correction and Light Source

Second Creature and Refining After a short break from this image I decided to add a second creature, which, in my opinion, added a lot to the eerie feeling. I duplicated

I wasn’t happy with the barrier on the door and

the first creature (another good reason to keep

the poster so I decided to paint over them. I

some elements on a separate layer) and moved

wanted the scene to feel like it was at night

it to the lower area of the image. To make sure

so I shaded the whole image using the Level

that the second creature didn’t look like a copy I

tool I got rid of the unnecessary elements and

Correction tool. To imply that the scene is light

used the Liquify tool and Transformation tools to

painted in some new shapes like the arm and

by some street lights I added two big diagonal

create a new body shape. By using the Eraser

the smoky body (Fig.11).

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page 81

Issue 073 January 2012

Final Details and Color Grading Now the image was close to finished. I created a new layer and started to paint in some bright highlights on the creatures. For the eyes I created a second layer, which was set to Add. I used a Soft Round brush twice the size of the eyes with a pretty bright value and painted in the glow of the eyes. To get the right look you could play around with the opacity of the layer. I used a custom cloud brush to paint in the foggy bodies. To add more of an atmosphere to the painting I created a new layer and painted in some fog using a cloud brush. Last but not least, I used the Color Balance tool for subtle color shifting. Finally I added Soft Light layers with a red and green tone to add warmth and contrast (Fig.12).

Markus Lovadina For more information please visit: http://malosart.blogspot.com/ Or contact him at: malo74@gmx.de

modo速 image by Teodoru Badiu www.theodoru.com

Meet modo.

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Gallery - 10 of the best images from around the world!

“Sector 21 ” Project Overview by Rudolf Herczog

Bruno Camara kick starts our brand new ZBrush tutorial series with the creation of this armored lizard character .

Cyborgs

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Sword Master 2

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Topology

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Interviews B. Börkur Eiríksson

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Tutorials

Illustrating Fairy Tales Chapter 4: The 3 Little pigs

by Blaz Porenta Designing Your Own Worlds Chapter 6: What to do with these Hippies?

by David Smit and Nadia Karroue Designing Droids Chapter 1: Recon Droid

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Issue 073 January 2012